The UK High Court of Justice has published a 231 page judgment which is nothing short of a scathing critique of Dr Craig Wright's claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin.
Following repeated lawsuits by Dr Wright against others, and assertions that he owned the copyright in the Bitcoin Whitepaper, the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) sued Dr Wright, seeking declarations that Dr Wright was not Nakamoto. The case was important as it impacts several cases which Dr Wright has brought against others, including members of COPA.
In March, Justice Mellor delivered an oral judgment, finding for COPA and slamming Dr Wright. This judgment sets out in painstaking detail the inconsistencies in Dr Wright's evidence and assertions that he is Nakamoto, starting with a bold assessment of Dr Wright's honesty with Justice Mellor saying:
Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. In both his written evidence and in days of oral evidence under cross-examination, I am entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly.
On the question of Nakamoto and the litany of lawsuits started by Dr Wright against those who stated he was not Nakamoto:
Satoshi Nakamoto was and remains a pseudonym....having heard all the evidence in this Trial, …it is likely that a number of people contributed to the creation of Bitcoin...
I consider it is likely that the real Satoshi would never have set out to prove in litigation that he actually was Satoshi and certainly not in the way that Dr Wright attempted to do so.
The discrepancies in Dr Wright's initial defence and later documents produced by Dr Wright was noted:
his Defence is notable for referring largely to documents which were made public by Satoshi. Bearing in mind the number of documents Dr Wright later disclosed as supporting his claim to be Satoshi, it is notable that the Defence did not make reference to any of them.
Many of those later documents were concluded to be altered or otherwise suspect. Much of the judgment recounted the chronology of Dr Wright's lawsuits and claims to be Nakamoto. The Court went into detail on a number of documents found to be forgeries and dissected how Dr Wright had modified documents. Ultimately His Honour said:
It is sometimes said that a good lie contains a kernel of truth. In my judgment, on many and frequent occasions, Dr Wright adhered to this proposition. I sensed there was often something in his answer which was true, but the answer as a whole was a plain lie or not an answer to the question put.
The Court repeated the declarations made at the end of the trial, that:
Dr Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper.
Dr Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period between 2008 and 2011.
Dr Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin system.
Dr Wright is not the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin Software.
An appeal by Dr Wright is highly likely, and it will take some time for the ramifications of this decision to flow through to other cases, but it will be greeted by most of the crypto world favourably by drawing a line under several ongoing disputes, and ending at least one man's claims to be the creator of bitcoin.
By M Bacina and S Pettigrove
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